I teach a treadmill boot camp class several times a week. Just like it sounds, participants fight (literally, they get up at 5 am to sign up two days in advance for the 6 spaces available) for me to bully them up hills and into crazy speeds on a treadmill. The workouts are designed to help people improve their running, become runners or just get a great cardiovascular workout. With only three variables – hills, speed and time – there are only so many programs you can do. I try to mix it up as much as possible, so today we did three segments each lasting 10 minutes. Between each of these sections, participants jogged or walked for 3 ½ minutes. For the first and third segment, I had runners (all were runners today) increase their speed by .1 to .2 every minute for the first 7 minutes and then go even faster if they could for each of the final 3 minutes. So, for example, if your comfortable run speed is a 6.0, then your profile for these 10 minute segments would look like:

minute 1: 6.2 mph

minute 2: 6.4 mph

minute 3: 6.6 mph

minute 4: 6.8 mph

minute 5: 7.0 mph

minute 6: 7.2 mph

minute 7: 7.4 mph

minute 8: 7.7 mph

minute 9: 8.0 mph

minute 10: 8.5 mph

For the second, or middle, 10-minute section, runners climbed a hill by .5 % grade every minute up until minute 7, and then 1 percent for each minute up to minute 10 while maintaining base speed (6.0 mph as per the example above). For example

minute 1: 1.5 %

minute 2: 2 %

minute 3: 2.5%

minute 4: 3 %

minute 5: 3.5 %

minute 6: 4%

minute 7: 4.5%

minute 8: 5.5%

minute 9: 6.5%

minute 10: 7.5%

This profile builds running endurance and strength, and could become anaerobic if you push your speed at the top of the speed minutes and the hill. My treadmill boot campers are no wimps!

I like that you posted this! Sometimes, it’s very difficult for people to understand / visualize what I’m talking about in regard to treadmill bootcamp. This totally puts it into perspective. Thanks for sharing! Wimps we aren’t!